Martha is a psychic who has a very reputable business in a Louisiana bayou. She’s brash and to the point. Her business card says it all – “world- renown.” Indeed, she has a private landing strip for the rich and famous in the field adjacent to where she ties up her houseboat.

When you board her vessel and enter her office, the first thing you’ll notice is her bingo card wallpaper which wraps the entire room. She said she started putting up the cards she won with over the years and after awhile, all the walls were covered. It’s truly bizarre.

But, so is Martha.

I sat down at her table as she struck a match to light some strawberry incense and then asked what she could do for me since I refused to give tell her on the phone why I wanted to see her.

“How many wins will the Pittsburgh Pirates have in 2008,” I asked.

She looked at me like I had lost my marbles, sucked down a few sips of coffee, then looked me dead in the eye and asked seriously, yet casually - “who the hell are the Pittsburgh Pirates?”

I knew then I was at the right psychic.

After spending ten seconds explaining they were a professional sports team, she started waiving her hands for me to stop talking. Just then, the lights went out and, almost as quickly, a yellow lava light turned on in the corner of the room. At this point I wished I was back in the 70’s with Mary Jane because this was getting to be too much, but I kept kewl.

A little elevator in the table we were sitting at brought up a deck of Tarot cards and she had me do all these contusions with the deck. Then I noticed something freaky - the cards had my birth sign on them. Too weird.

In twenty-minutes she told me everything I ever wanted to know about my life, but nothing about the Pirates much less how many wins they would have.

Then the lava lamp went out, the lights came back on, and she said the session was over.

As I got up and started for the door, I asked her again – how many wins the Pittsburgh Pirates would have. She chuckled in a grandmotherly kind of way, went over to her table and said some mumbo jumbo hocus pocus stuff, the little elevator in the table brought up a strange looking dart with real looking feathers on it and she picked it up.

She looked me right in the eye, held the glaze for about 5 seconds, then turned around and slung the dart at her wall.

It landed square in the middle of number 75 on one of the bingo cards.

After about 20 seconds of dead silence, she then turned to me, looked me back in the eye, and with absolute conviction said: “They will win 75 games.”

So there you go. Martha says the Pirates will win 75 this year and, you know what? I believe her. Throw away all the Zips and PECOTA forecasts and projections, throw away the stat books, and forget what everyone else has told you up to this point. It’s all worthless junk.

Just remember what Martha said – the Pirates will win 75.

Oh… 75!

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